


A Single Chromosome, & the Differences in a Childhood Education

by TheColorBlue



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, gender in historical contexts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-07 09:58:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert was not precisely what Rosalind had expected, in a man.<br/>Rosalind was not precisely what Robert had expected, of a woman.</p><p>Note: Now with a short extra story added.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: in the interests of full disclosure, I haven't played this game. This entire fic is the product of looking at youtube videos, tumblr fanworks, and wikipedia in general.

Her self from the other timeline was softer than she’d imagined, for a man. There was probably something to be said for growing up a man, and having everything and the silver spoon all but handed over to you. 

When you were a girl, people not only expected nothing of you (except fitting into glossy, flowery cages), worse, they impeded you if they thought that you were trying to break out in any way. Her mother wanted her to marry, to become a mother, to do everything that was expected of a young lady of her status. Rosalind Lutece knew even then that there were too many endless possibilities for her life, to even imagine such a dreary fate. She instead attended the Wellesly College in Massachusetts, one of the top academic institutions for women in the United States, where she received her degree in Physics. Following this, she worked in a lab at Harvard. It was hateful. She was a scientist, but all the men seemed to look at her as an up-start secretary. As woman, she was not even allowed to operate much of the equipment by herself; the protocols cited something about the delicacy of a woman, the difficulties of managing expensive machinery, and cost and liabilities. 

She used everything herself, anyway, secretly.

She built her own equipment. 

She managed to get along reasonably, but if only she’d the resources…

Comstock found her in the labs, one day, writing up reports on subatomic particles, and when she talked to this man, what she saw was a means to an end. He would be her patron. She would go on to… so many grander things.

On the day that Comstock sent in laborers to help her move her equipment to a new lab, she watched it all from the path leading up to her building. She watched then move out the boxes and crates. She was wearing a brand new tailor-made in fawn colors. The undergraduates and other post-grads of the building were watching the curious scene. The weather, in early spring, was glorious. Rosalind minutely adjusted her gloves, then her hat. She lifted her chin a little as she surveyed the labor. She felt… proud, of it all. There was a kind of hunger, for so much more. 

\--

Her self from another world had a weird sweetness to him. He had been oh-so-eager to meet her. 

“I’m sure you know what it’s like,” he said, clasping her hands. “To finally meet someone of a like-mind.” 

Another man, she might have pushed away, perhaps with even an air of disdain. Instead, she looked at Robert, and said, “And yet, why do I have the feeling that we are not completely of a like-mind. Like—“

“—and unlike,” he finished, but he was smiling rather, and Rosalind only stopped herself from giving him the driest look in response. 

He was a man who did not look down on her as a woman, all the stranger. If she had been a man, she wondered, would she have looked down on a woman scientist? Had he ever thought less of the women in his field? Would there have even been a difference between them at all, if not for—

“Odd how a single chromosome could cause so much difference in appearances,” Robert said, blithely. “And yet, so many similarities.”

“More or less,” Rosalind allowed. She let go of his hands, and walked round him. 

Rosalind inspected this man carefully. If she’d had his height, she would have used ever inch of it to her advantage. She wore heels, and wore her hair in a high up-do, and even that did not close the gap between them. But this Robert. He was softer than she would have imagined herself, as a man. Put him in an uncomfortable situation—for instance, Comstock and Robert arguing over their scientific work and the appropriate ethics thereof—and Robert had this mannerism of folding his arms over his chest, hunching a little when he was unhappy. Rosalind never hunched. She would never waste precious centimeters of stature. She looked people in the eye. Robert had a certain air he could put on when he really wanted something, when he wanted people to look at him a certain way, a kind of polish to it, but more often than not he was too blithe. 

He was easily bullied. By herself, anyway. When she needed equipment moved, she made him do it. When she needed someone to row the boat, he did all the rowing. 

Such a child, her other self could be. 

\--

For example, right then.

For several weeks, they had been investigating the properties of tampering directly with the materials of the known universe, in the laboratory of Comstock’s providing. 

At the moment, they were experimenting with the probabilities of coin tossing. 

Robert was trying ever so hard to weigh the probabilities towards head’s up, each toss; so far, they could not manage that kind of influence on the mechanics of that reality. Rosalind surveyed the scene at the lab bench, her pencil pressed against her bound journal. She thought: maybe they’d never manage. Maybe they were approaching this from the utterly wrong angle. 

Robert tossed the coin into the experimental field. The air seemed to warp and spark around it. The coin landed in a metal dish, spinning round, before coming to rest. Robert frowned down at the coin in the dish. He folded his arms over his chest, and Rosalind looked at him, brows lightly arched.

The coin was tail’s up. 

Her Robert looked oh so disappointed. 

Odd, how it was nearly endearing. 

On a whim, she reached across the table and tapped his chin with her fingertips. 

Rosalind always faced the world with her chin held high. 

“Chin up,” she said, briskly. “There’s always next time.”


	2. Chapter 2

Wearing a chalkboard at a fair would not be the worst indignity Robert Lutece had ever suffered. 

He’d been a Harvard undergraduate after all; on top of the usual beer drinking contests and informal boxing and wrestling matches, there’d been all the usual hoops that a freshman had to jump through as part of a new class, interested in becoming a part of the larger fold. Not everyone took their studies seriously. In fact, rather many didn’t. Robert Lutece, as a man of science, had been an exception rather than a rule; besides, anyone who stuck their nose in a book too long wasn’t taken seriously by anyone; there was all the usual posturing one had to go through, if you wanted to inspire either friendship or admiration. 

Robert liked to think of himself as the kind of man who was comfortable being _of men_. He could hold his alcohol tolerably well, and was comfortable with banter. 

Rosalind, somehow, was better at _both_. After a dinner party some years ago, hosted by Comstock, and attended by the whole host of their wealthy patrons, Rosalind had lifted one of the expensive bottles of wine, and challenged him to drinking contest. They’d been working long hours on little sleep for the past several weeks, putting the refining touches on new technological toys for the running of Columbia. 

“Rosalind, my dear, this is most unbecoming of a lady,” Robert had said, only half meaning it. They were in the shared sitting room of their living suite. The bottle of wine and two long-stemmed glasses sat on the table in front of them. Light from rose and gold colored lamps cast a cheery glow on the whole picture. 

Rosalind had loosened her up-do so that her hair fell loose around her shoulders. She picked up the bottle and poured two full glasses, sitting with perfect poise, and offering the very obvious challenge. 

“Either we’ve been working in and out of each other’s pockets for the last year and can treat each other as colleagues, on equal footing—or, my most darling Robert—I will drink you under the table, casting shame on the memory of every drinking contest you’ve ever engaged in.” When Robert opened his mouth to refute the point, she held up one hand and said, “Spare me the niceties, I know exactly what sorts of things your type get up to, myself being a women being beside the point.” 

“My type being different from your type, dearest?”

“Naturally,” Rosalind said. “Mine is the type that will hold the schematics while yours is the type that will carry the toolbox and hand me the monkey wrench when I request it, if you would so kindly.”

“Dear Rosalind—“

“Darling Robert.” She patted his hand with her own and said, sweetly, “Take the glass before I up-end it on your shirt. 

The wine was lovely. 

They were giggling like schoolchildren by the bottom of it. 

All right, _Robert_ was giggling like a school-boy, Rosalind had draped herself like a queen on the couch, and at one point she might have engaged in a rather dramatic recitation from _Hamlet_. Or maybe it was _King Lear_. It was hard to recall, looking back on it now. 

\---

But back to the chalkboard. 

At the Columbia Raffle and Fair, Rosalind had suggested that a large chalkboard, worn along with their coin toss, would make for good costuming. Naturally, it would be too undignified for a lady like herself to be hoisting that kind of contraption, so the honors would go to her much taller, far more strapping male counterpart. 

Robert readjusted the balance of the straps over his shoulders and then asked, interestedly, “Do you really think I’m strapping?”

Rosalind rolled her eyes, but then patted his cheek with her fingertips and said, “I’m sure that it would fit the bill of extreme narcissism for me to answer that honestly, wouldn’t you agree?”

Robert looked down at Rosalind. “To presume such would also be to presume that we were the exact same person.” 

“Hmm, you have a point.” 

“Yes, I’m quite sure I do.” 

“You’re getting chalk dust on your jacket,” Rosalind observed.

“Ah yes, I wonder how that could have _possibly_ happened,” Robert replied in exasperation. 

“Smile, Robert, we have an audience,” Rosalind said sweetly, and Robert looked over at the opening doorway, and at the rather ill-tempered looking, unshaven fellow coming through it. 

He tossed the coin.


	3. Chapter 3

Of course the relationship between the two of them had always been a little peculiar. Rosalind simply had not anticipated how far gone she had gotten until the day Robert had presented his ultimatum. He had begun with his usual hand-wringings, _it simply isn’t right, the more I think on what we’ve done, helping Comstock, how out of hand everything has gotten_ and then he’d paced back and forth in their lab, arms crossed over his chest. Rosalind had retorted with the usual practicalities _but, dear Robert, how on earth could we even begin to right the timelines_ … until he was standing in front of her once more, hands fisted at his sides, shoulders back, posture uncharacteristically straight. 

He said. “If you do not help me return Elizabeth to her timeline, then we must part. We will part.” 

Rosalind blinked at him, presented with something that she had never anticipated. “You can’t be serious.“

“I’ve never been so serious in my life,” he said. He had even stepped back a pace, as if a tear could have opened up behind him from his sheer will alone. 

Rosalind looked at her other self. 

Any other man, she would have laughed off. Her Robert, however, was not any other man, and Rosalind bowed her head a little, shocked at the sudden notion: that anyone could have been as capable of hurting her as Robert Lutece.

Before this moment, she had not known. 

And now she did. 

She looked back up at him then and said, “We shan’t ever be parted. Not if it’s contingent on a choice of mine, alone. I swear this on my life.” 

\---

Funny, how that had turned out. 

\---

After Comstock inadvertently arranged for their particles to be scattered across the universes, and before Dewitt wiped away his debts to his daughter: Rosalind and Robert shepherded Dewitt along and also they killed time. Metaphorically of course. Not every waking moment was spent shadowing Dewitt around. 

They didn’t even technically have to eat, or sleep, or any of the usual mundanities, but they did so anyway. 

While cooling their heels, and inbetween analyzing collected data, they walked the fair and ate candy floss and caramel covered apples. Rosalind went into shops tinkered with pianos and old phonographs. At the house they’d made for themselves that crossed continuities, Robert painted. He painted Rosalind, quite a lot, which Rosalind teased him about, calling it “his narcissism in disguise,” but the joke was on her when he asked her to pose, and dashed off a sketch of himself instead before showing it to her. 

She ran her finger through the wet oil paint, and examined the smudges left on her fingertips. 

“You’re very good,” she said. “Better than I ever would have been. Mother wouldn’t have minded my learning how to paint.”

Robert nodded. “She always was showing off my paintings, hanging them up around the house.” 

Rosalind wiped her fingers off on one of his rags. “I never cared for it. I only learned how to draw well enough to hash out a design for machinery, or to record observations in my laboratory books. Whatever did you see in this painting hobby?”

“Whatever did you see in playing softball?” Robert asked instead.

“There were girls’ teams at Wellesly,” Rosalind replied. “You still had to wear a skirt, all the weight of a woman’s regalia on a dusty field, but it was, perhaps, worth it to be allowed to hit things with wooden bats.” 

“I know how you love to hit things with wooden bats.”

“Hmmm,” Rosalind said, and reached up to smear a line of violet paint across his brow with her thumb. 

\---

They went out sometimes, to places with open lawns and sunshine; Robert pitched softballs, and Rosalind took to the bat. 

Sometimes, while the sun was going down, painting the sky above Columbia like gold and glass-enamel, Robert would look to the dance halls—but Rosalind would simply take his hand and lead him home. They’d turn on the gramophone instead, and dance together with the windows open to springtime. It was nicer that way. The people of Columbia could be so unpleasant, in all honesty. There was something too ugly, just under the surface, and with barely surface gilt layered over the top, like pealing-away leaves. 

“Let’s go away,” Rosalind whispered into Robert’s ear, one evening while they danced. They were at their seventy-second try at that point, another failed attempt to shepherd Dewitt to a mutual salvation. “We could go away, and forget about Comstock and Columbia.” 

“No, dearest,” Robert replied. His breath was warm against her cheek. “It’s the same for us as for the poor Booker Dewitt: return the girl, and wipe away the debt.” He moved back to look at her. “Don’t ask anything else of me. Don’t ask for me to leave you.” 

Rosalind stopped dancing, and then sat down. Robert sat down beside her. 

The music of the phonograph wound on.

“Where you see a blank page, I can only see _King Lear_ ,” she said.

“And where you see cages, I see birds freed in flight,” he replied. 

“Though I suppose,” she said at last, “it is also true, that we have all the time now—“

“—to try again,” Robert finished, inclining his head lightly at her. 

Rosalind reached out clasped his cheeks with her hands. “How could I have such a fool for an other self,” she demanded, shaking him ever so gently. 

He covered her hands with his own. 

He smiled. 

“Truly, another demonstration of the universes’ capacities for endless possibilities,” he said. 

She laughed then, finally letting him go, and then she stood up to put a new record on the phonograph.


	4. Extra Story: Her Name in the Windows

The strangest part was not living in a floating city. 

Nor was it standing in a floating city with her other self from another universe. 

The strangest part was living in a floating city—well, a city of suspended matter, having failed to commit the acting of falling—in a city where there was a statue of her likeness, with her name inscribed beneath, and herself in possession of a mansion with associated laboratories; her name was even inscribed in beautiful lettering on the windows thereof, all graceful flourishes. 

When Robert walked about town, looking at all of this, he smiled like he could have taken the honors and accolades for granted—which he very well would have, Rosalind _knew_ this, and she would have wanted to shake him. Going to school, growing older, she had heard too many horror stories about women whose work was scuttled off to the side, or who found that their work’s credit and honors were being carried off by male associates; or perhaps they were ignored completely, with all but a patient pat on the head and an indulgent smile. 

For Rosalind Lutece to be recognized for her work: it was nearly surreal. Quite frankly, part of her could have done without the attention of the public; she was, after all, a private woman at heart. 

Another part of her felt a peculiar strangeness at her own successes. 

How strange it all was.

How very strange. 

\--

At these altitudes, the air should have been quite cold, and thin of oxygen. However: even the tiniest, invisible molecules of breathable air had been suspended in the Lutece field, thus allowing for pleasant walks through its cobbled streets. Always, in Columbia, it was springtime. 

Rosalind and Robert had gone out for a promenade in the late afternoon. Rosalind wore a wide-brimmed hat and glasses with colored lens. She did hate being accosted by the random passer-by on the street. Robert could wander about unmolested, however. He’d bought a bag of oranges that he kept taking out to juggle. People mistook him for a particularly well-dressed street performer. Children stopped to watch; the adults would even throw him the occasional silver eagle. 

Under the shade of her hat, Rosalind frowned. Robert was so undignified, but she would not have raised a hand to stop his antics. Even further, Robert kept looking up at the skylines, inbetween juggling acts. Rosalind smiled then. Rapscallions off the street had been taking skyhooks and flying about on the lines. Robert was tempted to try the same, dangerous though it was, although he didn’t have quite the arm strength yet to attempt it.

Robert took out an orange and peeled it. Rosalind surveyed the city. She was already taking in the usual diagnostics, surveying building heights and movement, the slant of the sun through the suspended atmospheric layers around and above the city. Then she looked past the space of the air, and past the skylines, to the tower of the angel. 

Already, the familiar cynicism was taking hold. How ridiculous they were all being, she thought. What with the things they had _done_ , and what was happening to the girl, the so-called “lamb”—she knew: what a farce this walk on the town was. The Luteces were not ordinary twins, and Comstock was not a prophet, and the city of Columbia had been built on the backs of, such horrible…

Robert saw her watching the tower. His eyes took on that faraway look that always meant he was thinking, and thinking hard. And not for the first time he said, “We could—“

“No,” she said. She meant the answer as an end. 

How could they. 

What was there even to be done. 

Robert did not look happy. Yet, he took her gloved hand when she offered it, and he led her down the sunlit, flower-scented walkways of Columbia: the city of an angel.


End file.
